Stop some wars?

The Syria Solidarity Movement UK reports that at a Migrant Lives Matter protest in London on 25 April, the Stop the War Coalition stopped the Syrian movement representative speaking.

The Syrian group calls for “a peaceful, democratic Syria, a Syria without Assad and a Syria without ISIS”. Their speech would have demanded the British government take in more refugees from Syria.

“Stop the War” started by denouncing the NATO bombing which forced Serbia out of Kosova in 1999, but saying nothing about Serbia's slaughter and driving-out of Kosovars. It flourished in justified protest against the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Now, although the government making war in Ukraine has been Putin’s Russia, STW’s campaigning over Ukraine has been exclusively against the EU and NATO, which are not making war there.

In Yemen STW campaigns against Saudi bombing, but has nothing to say against the Iranian-backed Shia militias, in alliance with former president Saleh, driving into Sunni areas.

STW (and former SWP) leader Lindsey German says that she “oppose[s] foreign military intervention in other people’s countries” and she doesn’t “justify the actions of regimes that find themselves in the gun sights of our government”.

But when those regimes, like Assad’s in Syria, have their own or neighbouring peoples in their “gun sights”, her concern is to be with those regimes against big powers which demur for any reason, rather than with the people.